“Where I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of leverage on this is in talking about learning in particular, and kind of getting away from the student-success language, or the studying language,” said Vecera, a professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences who also directs the university’s honors program. “Not because those are the wrong ways of talking about that. But when you talk about learning, I think you can easily see how these skills transfer across not just courses, but also transfer from the university into a career.”
It was one of those reporting moments when an idea struck me as both revolutionary and obvious at once. Colleges often say they produce lifelong learners, but we hear a whole lot more about student success — which, after all, ties right into retention and graduation rates, and thus, the bottom line — than learning. After all, when Vecera had emailed to tell me about “a campuswide learning framework aimed at transforming the culture of learning on our campus” my interest was piqued, in part, because the phrase “culture of learning on our campus” is not one I often hear.
So what is Learning at Iowa all about? The project got off the ground thanks to funding from a public-private partnership. In a way, it scales up an undergraduate course Vecera teaches called “Learning About Learning,” in which students apply brain science to their work in both that course and the others they’re taking. Much as an athlete who understands anatomy and physiology can train more effectively, a student who understands cognition can study more effectively.
Students in the course learn about and apply concepts like spaced practice (as opposed to massed practice — that would be cramming), a studying approach that uses the way we form memories to students’ advantage. And they keep a metacognitive journal to reflect on their own learning.
Scaling these approaches up beyond a single course is an attempt to level the playing field. Some students come to college really understanding how to study — even if they don’t know the cognitive psychology behind those techniques. For others, the need to study effectively in order to perform well will be new.
The campuswide initiative is meant not only to make the three M’s available to all students, but to encourage professors and staff to draw on this same understanding of learning. This, in turn, will help these concepts — and the skills that connect to them — stick with students, Vecera said.
“The whole point of Learning at Iowa,” he said, “is to use the practices ourselves, to say: Students, to really understand and know how to use mind-set, metacognition, and memory, need to have these messages reinforced in meetings with their academic advisers, in the supplemental instruction they’re getting with our academic support and retention group, and ideally with instructors in courses who maybe have woven in some of this content to assignments in those classes.”
The project has resources about using the three M’s geared specifically for faculty members, and for staff.
The goal is a full-on culture change. Within the next few years, Vecera hopes, the three M’s will be difficult for students to miss. Everyone will be exposed to them in a module of a required onboarding course called “Success at Iowa,” and they’ll be reinforced through the supplemental instruction of their large introductory courses.
It’s an ambitious effort. Even if other colleges don’t take this kind of comprehensive approach, Vecera thought that the vocabulary — distilling what cognitive science says about how to approach learning — of the three Ms could be of use to many of our readers.
Your Thoughts on Mental-Health Breaks
If you haven’t yet read Sarah Rose Cavanagh’s recent Chronicle advice piece on student mental-health breaks, take a look here. Cavanagh, whose field is psychology, works at a teaching center and has a new book on mental health coming out soon. Her argument, while careful, is provocative: “Campus policies that offer mental-health breaks from class aim to solve one problem (student anxiety and stress) but often end up exacerbating another (student avoidance of social interaction, which tends to amplify anxiety),” she writes.
We know mental-health breaks have become a thorny issue on many campuses, and we want to hear more about what you’re seeing — and how you’re responding — in your classes. Have a story, observation, or perspective to share? Use this Google Form to fill us in.
The Right Amount of Help
In a recent newsletter, I shared a question from Craig Gibson, a reader who wanted your ideas on how professors can give struggling students the right amount of support — to help them without coddling them.
As usual, our readers came through. Here are a couple of especially helpful responses:
Andrea Aebersold, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Montana State University at Billings, writes:
“When it comes to helping students, I ask faculty to consider if students have the tools they need to accomplish the task. I see an instructor’s goal as being to provide the foundation for students to build upon. When students lack the foundation, they can’t write that paper, build that model, or solve that problem without help. So when a student asks for help/needs help, first identify if this is an issue with the foundation or higher-level steps. Is the student struggling to get started or have they hit a barrier partway through the task?
“An example of this would be a research paper. If a student has no experience with writing a literature review, an abstract, etc., they need guidance on the foundational pieces and how to do them well. Getting help here helps them to focus on the big stuff — their argument, their results, etc.
“Another question that can help differentiate between coddling and helping is this: What have you tried? When a student wants/needs help, asking them to first talk about what they have tried will show you where the problem is. If a student has tried nothing, then that’s where to start. If the student has tried XYZ and is still stuck, then that’s where to step in. To me, coddling is doing the work for them, solving the hard parts for them, not listening to the problem before solving it. Helping is recognizing when a student doesn’t have the capacity to complete a task, learning why that is, and assisting the student in discovering the way forward.”
Dan Ross, a math professor at Tennessee’s Maryville College who also teaches math-education courses, writes:
“The idea of ‘productive struggle’ has been a big topic in mathematics education for a while, and mathematics educators and researchers have placed much attention on how to provide just the right amount of challenge to students. One of the key findings that I’ve latched onto is that good questioning is one of the best ways to help students. When I first began teaching (as a high-school math teacher), I always assumed the best way I could help a student would be to show them the correct way to solve the problem / answer the question they had. I figured that then they would understand and could imitate my solution, but that wasn’t often the case. Now, instead I assume that the best way I can help a student is to try to identify the source of their confusion or misunderstanding and then try to ask a question that makes them confront or deal with the issue. Often it is a question that takes them back to a more foundational idea that they seem to have a better understanding of and then pushes them to apply that idea to their current problem.
“At best, the student realizes where they need to revise their thinking and has an ‘aha!’ moment that they have earned themselves so they can better integrate that understanding into their thinking. Sometimes that doesn’t happen, but then their response gives me further insight into their thinking and helps me better shape another question for them. Ultimately, sometimes I do end up giving up trying to help them with my directed questions and I show them more directly. But even at that point, they’ve had a chance to wrestle with the situation more and hopefully have a better chance for the explanation to be more meaningful.
“I’m no expert at this, but I keep practicing. I have worked hard to build a habit of mentally thinking, ‘What question can I ask that would point this student in the right direction?’ rather than just jumping into showing them the way I would answer, and I think it has helped me a lot in finding the balance of how much help to give students.”
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
—Beckie
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